Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 20 January 2009.
The Minister has claimed that Britain led the way in monetary policy, but we would not have been able to do so if we had taken the Government's earlier advice—it is the current advice from the Liberal Democrats—and joined the euro, because that would have meant giving up our power of self-government over monetary policy. Will he now repent of that folly and agree that joining the euro would have been a catastrophic mistake? Will he also agree with us that countering the recession will require both fiscal expenditure control and monetary interest rate control, which we can have only if we retain our own currency?